In the Beginning... Was the Command Line

A couple months ago, a coworker loaned me a paperback copy of In the Beginning... Was the Command Line by Neal Stephenson. This is a nostalgic flashback to the early days of computing. It was nostalgic when it was written in 1999, but now even the "contemporary" references are a 16 year flashback.

Stephenson recounts the changes in computing from the teletype IO access to a mainframe to the modern GUI and the competing ideologies behind most of these changes. (Some would call each change an "advancement", but I gag at the thought of some of the "features" of newer computers and OS's being considered more advanced, simply because the computer does more stuff.)

After returning the paperback to my coworker, one of the first things I did was buy the Kindle version for myself. This book is a must read.